08 August 2012

Discounted Software From kalmstrom.com In Surprising Context

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions gives a discount of 50 % to schools and charities, which is much appreciated and feels good for us all. Sometimes we even get unexpected “rewards” for it!

Free users important in the beginning
When Peter first begun developing and marketing his applications he gave them for free to all kinds of non-profit organizations. We believe this marketing strategy has played an important role in the success of the kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons. At that time the products were not so advanced, and as they were gifts the organizations did not demanded at lot either. Instead many of them were interested in helping troubleshooting the problems they found, and that way they also helped Peter make the applications better.

Overwhelming demand
As the years went by and the add-ons became more like the products we see today, the demand for the free licenses became overwhelming for us. Even if we were still grateful to the pioneers from the first years we decided to request payment also from non-profit organizations. Nowadays we give a discount to schools and charities, and we plan to continue doing that.

Teachers behind the company
My husband Sigge and I are former teachers, and both of us have also written textbooks and teacher’s aids. Therefore it is not strange that we want to support schools by giving them a 50 % discount on the fees when they subscribe to the kalmstrom.com products. Education is a topic that engages us, and if we can do anything to help schools spending more money on the children and their teachers we are happy to do that.

Charities for a better world
We hope that the kalmstrom.com software used by charities can make their daily work a bit more efficient and give them more time for the tasks that really matter. Among our discount Members are big charity organizations but also smaller ones that improve quality of live for people in the local area where they work.

Surprising payback
As the Members of the kalmstrom.com Community are found in many countries it happens now and then that their names pop out to us in contexts that have nothing to do with our products. This still makes us feel glad. “Oh, they are Members!”, we say to ourselves and read the text or whatever it is a bit more carefully.

That was what happened the other day when I had finished reading a book I liked very much: The Disappeared by the Canadian writer Kim Echlin. It is set in the ashes of the Cambodian genocide and tells us how violence and suffering can affect people. But it is also a wonderful love story, written in a clear and direct language. In the acknowledgements that came last in the book Ms. Echlin thanked The United Church of Canada for the McGeachy scholarship she had received through the church, and when I read that the jolt came back again: “A Member!”

Of course I know that Ms. Echlin would have been given the scholarship even if The United Church of Canada had not been a Member of the kalmstrom.com Community, and surely the IT staff that decided on our product had nothing to do with selecting the receiver of a scholarship for an author. In spite of that I could not help but feeling very content with my discovery of a connection between kalmstrom.com and this fascinating novel.